Empty
by nickelback2001
Summary: Post 5x22 oneshot. Dark! Elena reacts to Damon's death in a very different way... Trigger Warning: Attempted sexual assault and mentions of suicidal thoughts


"_Please don't leave me."_

Tears streamed down Elena's cheeks. _Damon was gone_. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. The Other Side was falling apart, and he was going to disappear with it.

She sat alone in the Salvatore crypt with her head between her knees, hyperventilating. Her entire body shook even though the air was sticky with humidity. She slowly rocked back and forth, trying to calm herself-it didn't work.

Elena was supposed to be over there with him-she had willingly gotten blown up just so he wouldn't die alone. She was determined not to cross over into the mortal realm until they were reunited, but Bonnie had forced her to. _And now she was alone._

Anger filled her-how dare Bonnie do this to her. She didn't want to be alive if Damon wasn't with her. The emptiness crept in. She was now damned to live an eternity without her other half. That realization was too much to bear. _She had to get out of here._

Elena walked out of the crypt, ignoring the calls of her name from Caroline and Stefan. She made it to the road, and she started walking North with no particular destination in mind. After about twenty miles, she stopped and laid in the middle of the road, staring blankly at the bright stars above her. Nothing seemed beautiful to her anymore. How could anything be beautiful if the thing she found the most beautiful-Damon's eyes, which were a completely unique shade of ice blue-no longer existed? _God, Elena would kill to just see those eyes for one more moment._

She was shaken out of her thoughts by the bright, yellowish headlights that were about to run her over. The car skidded to a stop two feet in front of her. A man hopped out of the car and rushed to her side.

"Oh my god, are you okay? Do you need me to call 911?"

Elena looked up at the man staring down at her. He had a medium build, with dark hair and blue eyes. His eyes looked rather dull to Elena, she had never seen ones that could compare to the beauty of Damon's. But, he did look similar enough to _him_ that it felt like this was God's way of punishing her for her sins. How dare this man be alive and walking around and not Damon? _It wasn't fair._

In a split second, Elena was standing in front of the man. In another, her fangs were extended, and she began to ravage his neck. The man struggled against her, but he was nothing compared to Elena's supernatural strength. His blood was warm going down her throat-_it felt good._ Elena had almost never given in to her vampiric side, but it felt good to do. In a matter of a minute, she had drained his entire body and she threw him off to the side of the road. Elena was a natural predator-and the kill felt good. She enjoyed the feeling of waning life force-his heart slowly coming to a stop. It was the only feeling that could replace the emptiness that plagued her mind.

She stepped into his car, and started to drive, continuing her path North. At daybreak, Elena made it to Richmond, and decided to take a pitstop. She walked into a bar that was empty except for a lone man who was wiping the counter of the bar.

"Hey, we're closed…" he trailed off, admiring her beauty. "Can I get you a drink, gorgeous?"

"_Yes."_

Within seconds, Elena was behind the man, tearing through his corteroid artery. The high that she had felt from feeding from the man in the road had worn off, and she was more than ready to regain the feeling. She sank her fangs deeper in his neck, revelling the feeling. But like the other man, he was dead within in the minute and the feeling was gone. Elena pushed the man's limp corpse away, and grabbed a bottle of bourbon off the shelf. She sat at the bar and took a long swig.

"_Here's to you, Damon."_

After half of the bottle, she felt a light buzz. _God, why did one of her vampiric abilities have to be not being able to get drunk easily? _All Elena wanted to do was to get so drunk that she would forget how much pain she was in-but she was not given that mercy.

She sighed and headed back to the care, driving for a couple more hours. She stopped again at dusk when she hit Baltimore. Elena walked the streets, looking for something to fill the void that had consumed her. She walked down an empty ally, but then stopped when she heard voices behind her. Using her vampiric hearing, she listened into their conversation.

"_How about her?"_

"_Yeah, she's perfect. Great ass too."_

"_I call first dibs."_

"_No way, she's mine."_

God, what idiots these men were. They had no clue that they were about to walk straight into a deathtrap, a painful one at that. She stopped and waited for the men to catch up to her, bored. When she turned, five men surrounded her.

"I'll give you ten seconds to run," Elena smiled.

The men snickered and stepped closer to her. _Their funeral. _She snapped two of the men's necks in a split second, the other men barely having a chance to recognize what had happened. She relished the sound of the snap. In another second, Elena decapitated one of the men's heads clean off with her teeth. Another second passed, and Elena kicked one of the men in the back with such a force that he was instantly paralyzed. The last man, seeing all of this, got a two second headstart from her, but it didn't last long. Within a second, she was draining his body dry. He was dead in thirty seconds. She then returned to the paralyzed man, staring down at him with empty eyes. His expression was one of sheer terror-_the predator in her enjoyed it. _She bent down and swiftly snapped his neck. Elena took a step back and surveyed her massacre-blood covered every inch of the ally. She looked down at her clothes-they were soaked in it. That was going to be a problem.

She stayed in the shadows until she came upon a house. She knocked on the front door, and the door creaked open, revealing an old woman. Elena compelled her, and she stepped into the old house. She walked straight into a bathroom, peeling off the bloody clothes. She stepped into the shower, and let the hot water run down her body. She felt no relief from it-Elena didn't think she would ever feel relief again-just emptiness and pain. She reminisced about all of the times her and Damon stood in his large shower-their slick bodies molded together while Damon drove deeper into her…

Elena broke herself out of her revery. There was no sense in being nostalgic for something that was never going to happen again. Damon was dead. She was never going to see him again-at least not in this lifetime.

She stepped out of the shower, and wrapped a towel around her wet body. She searched through the closets and found clothes that would fit her well enough until she could compel herself some new ones. Elena thanked the woman for her kindness, and continued her walk around the streets. When she passed an attractive girl who was wearing a tight, black cocktail dress, she stopped her and compelled her to give her the dress and heels she was wearing. Now dressed more appropriately, Elena made her way into a bar and slumped down in a stool-she could really use a drink after the night she was having. She sat there for a few hours-the burning liquid having no effect on her or her emptiness.

Elena took a bottle with her, stole a sports car, and continued to drive North while taking swigs of the bourbon. She drove 120 miles per hour down the highway, not caring about her recklessness. It's not like she feared death-at this point, she would invite death over to her house for tea-but it was nearly impossible for her indestructible condition. Eventually, she made her way to New York City, draining every town that came before it. _How long had it been since Damon had died?_ Elena wasn't sure. It could've been days or weeks or months-time was meaningless to her, not when she had an entire eternity stretched out before her.

The sheer amount of people who lived in this city was insane-she could have some fun here. She decided to stay in the city for awhile, so she compelled herself an apartment. At night, she went from bar to bar drinking herself to death then draining men to theirs. But by day break, she isolated herself in her apartment-succumbing to the pain of Damon's death.

One night, she lured a man back to her apartment who had dark hair and blue eyes-her favorite kind of victim. She pushed him against a wall, and sank her fangs in his neck, slowly draining him so that she could prolong the high. He fell limp to the floor, and his wallet fell out of his pocket. Elena picked it up out of curiosity, and opened it to reveal its contents. A photo stuck out of one of the folds. She pulled it out to better examine it. In the picture, the man was holding a small girl with blonde curly pigtails on his shoulders at what looked like a zoo. _Oh God, this man was someone's dad. And she killed him-without a second thought._

Elena rushed over to a mirror and stared back at her reflection. Her lips were stained with blood. But what was worse were her eyes-her dark eyes were almost black with hunger. _She was a monster._ If she thought Damon's ice blue eyes were the most beautiful things she had seen in the world then her dark, ravenous eyes were the ugliest.

Guilt crept up into Elena and consumed her. How many men had she killed? Surely, almost one hundred. Disgust filled her-what had she become in Damon's absence. If he was here, he certainly would be looking at her in disgust too. _She enjoyed killing people-how sadistic was that?_

She knew what she needed to do. She hopped into her stolen car and hit the gas, making her way back to Mystic Falls as fast as she could. The next day, Elena had reached her destination-the graveyard. She walked straight into the Salvatore crypt, and began to talk to Damon.

"I can't take it anymore, Damon. I've been a horrible person these last few months, and I don't think I can live with myself. I can't take an eternity _without you._ All I feel is emptiness and pain, and I can't live with it for one more second of it. I know you would kill me yourself for even considering this…"

Elena raised the stake that she had brought above her heart.

"I love you, Damon. I'll see you soon."

She ignored the tears running down her cheeks and how much her hands shook-_she needed to do this, it was the only way she would ever see Damon again. _Elena steadied her hands and was about to plunge the stake into her heart when…

"_Elena."_

She must have been crazy. There standing at the entrance of the crypt was Damon, looking at her very disapprovingly.

"If this is my mind trying to talk myself out of this, it's not working."

God, now she was talking to herself. _How crazy was she?_

"I'm not a hallucination, Elena. It's me. I'm back. I was in a prison world…"

_Prison world?_ Her mind wasn't that creative. So that meant...could this Damon be telling her the truth? Was he alive? In a split second, Elena was standing in front of him, the stake laying forgotten on the floor. She reached out her hand and stroked his cheekbone-it was solid-he wasn't an apparition. Elena threw her arms around him, sobs racking her body. Damon let her cry it out in his shoulder, rubbing circles on down her back.

"I've done some pretty horrible things, Damon. I enjoyed killing people."

"Shhh… it's okay, Elena. All vampires do-it's a part of who we are. You could never be a horrible person."

Elena just continued to cry into the crook of his neck, releasing four months of pent up grief. Slowly, she calmed down, and pressed her ear to his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. She pulled away, and stared up into his beautiful ice blue eyes-the ones she had missed so much.

"I love you, Damon."

"I love you too," he murmured.

He gently stroked her cheek, and tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. Damon leaned down and pulled her into a gentle kiss-God, Elena had missed this. All of her nerve endings were on fire, just from one touch of his. She pressed her face back into his chest, and inhaled his comforting scent. She would be okay again-_one day._

**The End**


End file.
